Dementia Interpreter®
Course Content
- Course Introduction
- Become a Dementia Interpreter®
- Module 1 - Definitions
- Module 2 - Communication
- Module 3 - Attitude
- Module 4 - Words and Terms
- Module 5 - Making Changes
- Module 6 - Changing Circumstances
- Module 7 - Body Language
- Module 8 - Experiential Training Introduction
- Module 9 - Changes Over Time
- Module 10 - Questions
- Experiential Training - Part 1
- Experiential Training - Part 2
- Experiential Training - Part 3
- Experiential Training - Part 4
- Experiential Training - Part 5
- Summary
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Experiential Training - Part 5
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So, last activity. Dennis, you still alright? Yes. You ready to go? Absolutely. Born ready. Born ready, I like that. It is a good answer. So, our last activity, we have impaired speech, vision, hearing, what else could we impair? Movement, I suppose. Movement, movement. We are going to use a bit of equipment to impair Dennis' movement. Now, what we have is a restraint jacket that we are going to get you to wear. Proper name for this is restraint jackets, it is a straitjacket. That is what we are going to get you to wear. You are going to wear this, you are going to wear all the other bits of equipment you wore last time and it is going to be very similar again. Going to give you statement, you are going to try and communicate to the guys. Now, this time, there is going to be no moving. You guys, like we just spoke about with Dennis, you can use touch if he is not able to sort of hear how you are trying to communicate with him. So we are going to be nice to you on this one. Only difference is rather than one statement, I am going to give you two statements to read this time. So, just like we did before, if you would like to take these and memorise them for me. And then when you are ready, we will get you all ready to go. Ready. Right. So when you guys are ready, off you go. You might have to let Dennis know he can start communicating, you might have to use some sort of prompt, just to let him know. But when you are ready, off you go.. I have no idea. No idea.. Something about world?. Are you guys picking up anything? Any guesses? No.. Is he saying world? I do not know. Well, try and ask him.. Are you saying world? World? If he cannot hear you, you could try getting a little bit closer. A bit slowly.. On a cruise? Something about a cruise?. Come, do it again.. No. No? Get me out of here?. Get me out of here?.. No. Do it slowly. First word. Slowly. Should we get him out of there? I reckon he has had enough now.. We will give you a break. There we go. Right, let us get you up and let us get your equipment off. Right, so Dennis, how are you feeling after that? Interesting experience. That is one way of describing it. Why interesting? I actually felt quite vulnerable, believe it or not. That is actually interesting. So, why would you say you felt vulnerable? Because I was unable to communicate to these two. And it got to the point where I just thought... I am bored now. I am bored of trying to talk to you two, useless. Did you feel like you got to a point then where you just thought, "What is the point? There is no point in... " Yeah. I certainly... Yeah. I even shunned you two off, doing something, your hands were like... What on earth are you doing? And how did you find having to communicate with the both of them there? They were about as useless as each other. With the communication, on that point, it was just hard work. Hard work? Hard work. I think this is a really, really big... Yeah. Real hard work. There is lots of obvious reasons why it is hard work there. So, the two sentences, the two statements you had to read out. Can you remember what they were? "Betsy, get me a beer," and "Mother made me macaroni and cheese for dinner," or words to that effect. Words to that effect. So, there is two sentences there you have got to read. So, all you had to do was remember two sentences. But all of that effort you have got to put in to communicate it, it is almost impossible to remember both of those. So, we have kind of done a little bit of short term memory loss there, like we see with a lot of people living with dementia. For me, the biggest thing about this is all of that effort it is taking to communicate those two simple sentences, I do not think we always fully appreciate the effort people have to put into communication. And this is linking back to what we said earlier on about giving people that time that they need. It is taking a serious, serious amount of effort. The least we could do is give them the time. At least the guys did sit down for you and did pay attention, even if in your own words, they were still useless. So, we will jot that down.. No. You have said it now. You have said it now. How did you guys find trying to communicate with Dennis though? Quite hard, actually, because I could not really understand if you could hear me or not, since he had the headphones on. So, I did not really... I could not hear a thing. And I am trying to, again... But then I was mindful that you found that frustrating last time. So, I was trying to not do that as much but... I think for me, I became frustrated. Yeah. I became frustrated because I was getting your attention, I was trying to say words back to you to see if you understood them and we were trying to slow you down. Because for me it was, let us try and start on one word. If we can get one word, we might be able to then fill in the blanks for you like we did before, but obviously we could not do that. And then you started almost speeding up because you were becoming frustrated with us. So in turn, it made less and less sense. Frustration for you, this is such a big thing, because how often do we see somebody trying to communicate with somebody living with dementia, getting frustrated with the individual? We see it all the time and we have all been in situations where we have got frustrated with someone when we are trying to communicate with them and we are not both on the same page. The big problem we have is if we start to show that frustration, then like we spoke about earlier on before we started the practical bit, that person will start to mirror that and start to display that back to us. And you see it, don't you? You see a husband and wife and the wife is starting to get frustrated at the husband, the husband then gets frustrated with the wife, how actually it is always reflected back at us. So yes, it is very hard to communicate there and understand what everyone is saying, but we cannot start to show that we are getting frustrated or wound up about it, trying to keep calm and balanced is so important. If we cannot do that, we are not going to get anywhere. I think with that one for yourself, Dennis, as well, because you have used throughout all of these activities, lots of gestures and movements. And that time, it was... Nothing. Impossible. Absolutely. And I am guessing maybe that fed into that feeling of... Yeah. I wanted... 'cause I knew that I was quite good with gestures other things. Well, do you know what? after your happy birthday earlier on, I would argue that, but no, no, it is fine. And I thought, well, that is another sense, a thing that I can do that has just been taken away from me. There is no other way of communicating, there was nothing. And like you said, you felt vulnerable. Vulnerable and isolated. Vulnerable, isolated, lonely and it is a horrible, horrible situation to be in there. You were still communicating so much to us, though. So obviously, Dennis had his two statements to read out and that was quite hard to understand, but was Dennis communicating anything else to you guys during that exercise, other than just those two statements? I think we have ready mentioned it, but you did look frustrated. Yeah. So what was Dennis doing that was telling you he was frustrated? I could just... It is just his body language, the vibes that I was picking up, that he was starting to get really frustrated. And I almost felt a little bit awkward 'cause I thought, "Do I touch him, don't I touch him?" And then, I did not want to make him even more frustrated because I wanted to try and concentrate on what it was that he was saying. So it is quite hard to read, I think. Body language is so important. And we all know, I think it is a really well known fact that we communicate more through body language than through what we say or how we say it, but we are really bad at picking up on body language a lot of the time because we are so used to focusing on verbal communication, what we can hear people saying. There, without Dennis having to say it, you could quite easily tell, getting frustrated with the situation, 'cause earlier on, you were nice and relaxed, but this time, you were just. You got quite rigid, actually. Yeah. Your breathing changed. What happened with Dennis' breathing? It then starts becoming a little bit more erratic and the more that you were saying things, then, you become faster in what you were saying when we were trying to do the opposite and get you to actually slow down and do word for word. Your breathing changed, your body language changed and then you started going faster and faster. And then you started just automatically going from Kate to me. And almost got to the point where you were like, "What is the point, because yep, you are not going to get it, yep, you are not going to get it. Let us go back." Picking up on that breathing there is okay, 'cause you would not have made a conscious effort or a conscious decision there to change your breathing. This is just a natural thing that happens. And that is letting us know, getting a bit agitated or getting a bit frustrated. Or for some people, it could be scared or fearful about something. We never, ever stop communicating. A lot of the communication we do is subconscious, we do not realise we are doing it. Breathing is a great example. Without Dennis having to tell us, we can pick up so much because his breathing has changed. Your skin tone changed. Yeah. I was going to say that, you were starting to get a little bit red, at a point. Which is telling us once again, frustrated or hot. It could been simply you have got a jacket on, you are getting hot and you are letting us know you are hot without actually having to tell us that you are hot. And this is such an important thing when it comes to being a dementia interpreter and just communication in general. We never, ever, ever stop communicating in life. First breath we take to the last break we take, we are communicating constantly. And I hear people saying all the time, "I support someone living with dementia, they cannot communicate." That is wrong, Dennis has just proven there. Found it very hard to speak, could not see, could not hear, could not move much, but you were still telling us so, so much about how you felt. And this is the key to becoming a dementia interpreter. We need to realise that people will never, ever stop communicating. It is our responsibility to change how we view communication and start to pick up on all those things that Dennis was doing there. One last thing before we wrap up the activity side of this, is we mentioned a couple of minutes ago that you were communicating with both the guys and switching between the two. Now, we know, don't we, when we are communicating with someone, it is best if there is just one person there? Throughout this course, we have had two people that you have been trying to communicate with, two people is going to cause, for most people, more issues. So this last activity, it was a great example, who do you communicate with? 'Cause you were switching between Kate and Rachel and back to Kate and back to Rachel. So one person makes that a lot clearer. Some people as well, they might find more than one person a little bit aggressive. You have got two people there, that is quite intimidating. If I have got one person there, nice and relaxed. Something you see a lot, especially with something like that. If you have got someone who is struggling to understand what someone is trying to communicate, "Can you come and give us a hand?" And then you have got two of you there and then "Oh. I do not understand." "Can you come and give us a hand?" And then you end up with a group of people. And rather than helping with the communication, it just puts more barriers in the way. During this session, we have not given you guys a choice about that with all the activities, but going forward, we need to make sure we have got the right amount of people, that we do not need more people there than we actually do need. Fantastic. Thank you once again, Dennis, for volunteering to be our person in care. I am sure Kate and Rachel would be glad to give him a little round of applause. I think he deserves that. Brilliant job. Brilliant job.
Experiential Training for Care Staff: Comprehensive Sensory Impairment
Overview of the Final Exercise
Simulating multiple sensory impairments in dementia care training.
In this video, the experiential training for care staff continues by simulating impairments in speech, vision, hearing, and now movement.
